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Public toilets are essential urban infrastructure that should be clean, accessible, and inclusive for all citizens, yet they are often neglected in design and maintenance. To improve these facilities, methods such as user feedback collection, focus groups, and participatory planning should be employed to better understand community needs. Additionally, enhancing the status of cleaning staff and integrating modern technology can lead to improved hygiene and user experience, ultimately fostering a more positive perception of public toilets.

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3 views4 pages

Draft 2 - R1

Public toilets are essential urban infrastructure that should be clean, accessible, and inclusive for all citizens, yet they are often neglected in design and maintenance. To improve these facilities, methods such as user feedback collection, focus groups, and participatory planning should be employed to better understand community needs. Additionally, enhancing the status of cleaning staff and integrating modern technology can lead to improved hygiene and user experience, ultimately fostering a more positive perception of public toilets.

Uploaded by

khizrmahdi786
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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A public toilet is a facility provided by the state to its citizens to ensure adequate access to

clean, safe facilities for public at large and to enhance the quality of urban scapes. It
functions as an important form of urban infrastructure since it contributes value to the city
scapes not only as a utility but also as an amenity.
When we visualise a public toilet, do we ever imagine a universally accessible, fully
functional, well lit, thoroughly sanitised and clean toilet, having a dispenser generously filled
to the brim with undiluted soap?
Its no surprise that this particular sector of public facilities is gravely neglected in terms of
design and infrastructure. A public toilet although many to be inclusive has been reduced to
an unnecessary road block. In order to understand the significance of these spaces, we need
to employ a team of active participants who thoroughly understand, research and collect
data based on user feedback.

Methods such as Data collection of what the public wants, Interviews, Surveys, File Reviews
and structured observation should be used to increase public input as they are the real
stakeholders. Research techniques such as small Focus group discussions can also be
conducted to collect data through group interaction. The group comprises a small number
of carefully selected people who discuss a given aspect. Focus groups are used to identify
and explore how people think and behave.

Following are examples of some popular research centres:-


● Delphi, where a systematic and qualitative method of forecasting by collecting
opinions from a group of experts through several rounds of questions. The Delphi
method relies on experts who are knowledgeable about a certain topic so they can
forecast the outcome of future scenarios, predict the likelihood of an event, or reach
consensus about a particular topic.
● Charette, where there is an approach to participatory planning in which a
multidisciplinary team is put together, typically made up of planners, residents, city
officials, architects, landscape architects, transportation engineers, parks and
recreation officials, and other stakeholders, to develop a design and implementation
plan for a particular project.
These methods provide a better understanding of the needs and requirements of the local
people as well as the community as a whole.
Such methods will not only improve the user's perception of a public toilet, but also help
improve the quality of the construction and infrastructure itself.
By approaching these techniques, we can increase peoples’ willingness to use the toilets
since it is regarded as a ‘good facility’ not the ‘only facility’.
When it comes to implementation, let us start by asking ourselves a set of very relevant yet
often disregarded questions.
Can we expect a differently abled person to utilise a regular public toilet?
Do we have a specified area for the third gender?
Does a public toilet cater to all age groups?
Do women feel safe within the boundaries of these toilets?
And the most pertinent of all, does hygiene play an important role in maintaining these
spaces?
These questions point us to the larger social concern:
Are we providing public toilet facilities that are all inclusive?
We need to realise that an adequately sanitised, functional restroom that addresses the
needs of different sets of people is not unachievable. A very good example for this plausible
definition of public toilet is a local airport.
One would describe these restrooms as well- equipped, fully furnished designed for
comfortable and safe experience. Apart from these basic factors, they have been able to
successfully achieve a comprehensive array for all travellers.
Nevertheless, these facilities are only accessible to a group of people based on their
economic status. The persons who cannot afford to travel by airways are unfortunately
barred from experiencing these basic provisions.
Clearly, we have started to regard the basic functioning and requirements of public toilet as
a luxury rather than a necessity.
The comparison between these two extreme scenarios has created a daunting canyon
between people belonging to different groups, unfortunately classified based on their
economic status, abilities, age and gender. If asked to describe a basic toilet, these persons
will have an extremely contrasting, unfamiliar and irreconcilable set of answers.
In order to defy these barriers, we must shed light upon the fundamental, essential and
most importantly, preferred ideas of a restroom.
How will it improve our environment?

Public toilets carry great potential in order to establish a progressive outlook towards the
city’s hygiene and perception of maintenance.
Other than this, we tend to overlook the factors that help maintain these facilities “labour”.
Unfortunately, the staff responsible for the cleanliness of toilets are exposed to a futile
discrimation in terms of respect and opportunities. When we start to focus on uplifting the
perceived status of the staff itself, it will be easier to achieve our goals towards a
progressive mindset.
Providing a dedicated area for the staff encourages their participation in the process and
increases their earnestness towards work ethic.
This will also help to neutralise the barrier between the user and cleaner.
Providing a performance review will help upgrade the quality of work and implement a
sense of trust in the users towards the facility.
An example of this is seen in the United States where seven airports around the country,
including Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), have invested in a software system called
TRAX SMARTRESTROOM, which aims to keep bathrooms cleaner and helps move the lines
to use stalls more. First, each bathroom with the smartrestroom has a light above the stall
indicating whether it’s in use: a green light means it’s available while red signals occupied.
The software also has a counting sensor at the entrance of the restroom that tracks when
passengers walk in and leave. Each airport can pick how many people enter the restroom
before an email alert is sent to its custodial supervisor indicating that it’s time to clean the
restroom, after 300 people. And, most importantly for passengers, they have the option to
leave feedback on their bathroom visit through a tablet at the exit of the bathroom. They
can choose one of three faces: "exceptional," "average" or "poor." If they pick the sad face
(poor), the tablet displays a series of six potential issues they encountered. This feedback is
instantly emailed to the custodial supervisor who can dispatch an employee to fix the
problem as quickly as possible.
Similar systems utilising QR codes to access online forms for collecting user feedback are
operational in many private institutions across our own country as well.
The modern solution to a clean restroom would be a self-cleaning toilet, although easier to
install, it still requires maintenance. And it is more important to utilise this necessity for
maintenance in order to provide job opportunities that significantly improve the economic
state of low-income groups.
But does the clean interior of a public toilet ensure a clean environment outside it? Can we
provide a stable exterior environment for the users? Or are the two environments to
perpetually remain mutually exclusive of each other?
I beg to differ, but a dingy street or a busy highway are not the most welcoming sites for
users, and in order for public toilets to truly be inclusive they need good design for not just
their interiors, but as much for the exterior scape within which they are placed.
Perhaps, we can try to extend the boundaries of these facilities beyond the sewage lines and
robust tiling. What if the nearest tree was an extension to the toilet and surrounded the
neighbouring landscape within the boundaries of the toilet? Would this not help us
generate more footfall within the area and hence, avoid a sense of insecurity while using the
washrooms?
When we take this a step further, an inbuilt water treatment plant can lead to a more
sustainable built up space and reduce resource and energy consumption as well. The
remaining greywater can be strategically used to irrigate the surrounding landscape.

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